Sunday, January 29, 2017

With the version 2.0 of Pax Stellarum pretty much ready, I decided to improve the table and scenery I use for my space battles.

I do have a space mat, but it's a bit too blue, too full of nebulae, and I wanted something darker, so I just sprayed one of our gaming tables at our club black, added stars with the tooth brush technique and painted a few gas clouds to give it a bit of color.

The result was a very convincing outer space background with little investment:

I also worked on some pieces of scenery. Below are a couple of Hyperspace Rifts. In game terms, ships moving into contact with these risk getting randomly projected to a different spot on the table.

On the back of these I painted Distortion Fields, which affect ships' heading when they move in contact with them.

I also painted a trio of planets, much larger than the ones I previously had. These are styrofoam half-spheres that I covered with acrylic puty, sanded and painted.

First, a gas giant:

Next, an Earth-like planet:

And last, a barren planet or large moon:

To come up with mines, I used sewing beads, they're pretty inexpensive, and already come with holes for the pins, so quite practical. I would prefer to have used the mines from Battlefleet Gothic, but they go for crazy prices on ebay these days, and I needed a lot to use in a minefield, as well as to represent mines laid out by ships while they move, so for now these will do.

Below, I put some ships next to a mine token to give an idea of their scale:

I already had several pieces of plasticard sprayed black which I use as area terrain to determine the boundaries of my asteroid fields, as can be seen on the pic below. Their underside is painted as nebulae, so I can use them both ways, just like my Hyperspace Rifts/Distortion Fields.

I'm now pretty satisfied with my gaming table. Looking forward to putting it to use soon!

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Here are my first units of russian infantry. These are Hat Industries Russian Militia. A single box comes with 100 models (!), which were enough to come up with 3 units plus 4 spare models that I might use in command bases to help set the scene.

Friday, January 20, 2017

We recently played our first full-scale battle of Hail Caesar at our gaming club, fielding my armies of romans and celts. In total, about 450 points per side.

The deployment:

I got to command the barbarians, I started off sending my entire cavalry to a face off against their roman counterparts.

Half of my horses stood to face the roman cavalry, and the other half wheeled to charge at 2 cohorts of auxilia nearby, which then reformed into square, but suffered heavy casualties nontheless.

In the middle of the field, the romans advanced, supported by their intimidating artillery, and my warbands endured quite a punishment from those well-drilled legionary cohorts.

After several clashes, the roman cavalry finally mamanged to put most of my horses to flight, and the single remaining unit I had (which was harassing their auxiliary infantry squares) was completely surrounded.

Meanwhile, my warbands were also having a hard time holding their ground against the roman onslaught. The enemy pushed forward like an unrelenting tide of steel, breaking several of my warbands and spreading fear and disorder on my ranks.

The remains of the gallic cavalry, surrounded and cut down to the last man!

When the celt left flank, collapsed, with their cavalry completely destroyed, the day was won for the romans. The sight of thousands of roman horses moving to flank the gaul centre was enough to put all remaining warbands to flight in despair. Many were cut down by the pursuing roman horses, ending the battle in an utter desaster for the gauls.

Friday, January 6, 2017

Since I hadn't painted a single unit for my austrian army during the entire year, it seemed only proper that I'd give them some love in the form of reinforcements as my last project of 2016.

This is a unit of Chevauleger, from Hat Industries, and is the first light cavalry for my Austrian army. I plan on doing some hussars in the future, to further expand the light horse branch of their cavalry.

Simultaneously, I painted a few extra horses of bavarian chevauleger, to convert their unit from standard to large sized, and did the same with my Austrian Dragoons, which is the same kit as the austrian chevauleger, since their uniform was basically identical.

Now it's time to start working on russians, my 4th main army of Napoleonics, a project that is going to occupy a considerable part of my hobby time during 2017, but I'll also be producing a few reinforcements for my current armies (French, British and Austrians), as well as working on my sci-fi collections (space ships and Beyond the Gates of Antares, mainly).